•Says no ceasefire deal with sect
In what
appears as a contradiction of a ceasefire deal announced last week by
Special Duties Minister, Kabiru Turaki, President Goodluck Jonathan has
denied any peace deal between the Federal Government and the Boko Haram islamist sect.
Jonathan, who disclosed this in an interview broadcast by Cable Network
News, CNN on Friday said his administration was already winning the war
against terrorist groups in the country. This, however, contradicted an
earlier claim by Turaki who had said the Federal Government has a
ceasefire understanding with the mainstream Boko Haram led by the late
Mohammed Yusuf. He had said the government was working on broader terms
for the ceasefire and will unfold it soon.
“We have reached an
understanding with them (Boko Haram) for ceasefire, which they have
already directed and which we have accepted. We are working on the
formal agreement which will follow in due course.”
But in his
response to a question on the ceasefire talk, Jonathan emphatically said
no such thing took place. His words: “No negotiation, no. In some other
parts of the world, I don’t want to mention names here, it is not
negotiation. The issue is that am not begging. But if you are somebody’s
daughter and you are not doing what is right, if you are in a secondary
school or you are in a school and people observe that this young lady
is not doing what is right, the way she dresses, the way you talk, some
people will come through the mother to talk to the daughter or your
school teacher to do that. That is what we are doing. It is not
negotiation.”
He said the concept of terrorism is totally strange to
Nigeria and will not be allowed to have any root in the country.
According to him, “Of course terror attacks and suicide bombing was not
known in our country before. It is the newest security challenge we have
and when it started as it were, we did not have the terror architecture
and the time to deal with terror so we decided to deal with the
ordinary criminals. But when it came we were taken aback but now we are
building up. Recently, there was an attack in a school where 29 students
were killed. But in terms of the frequency of the incident happening,
it has gone down drastically and we are working very hard and I believe
if you are to interview me again probably in three months time, you
would praise me that the government has tried in terms of fighting
terrorism in Nigeria.”
On the approach being used to fight the
scourge, Jonathan said: “Of course, you tackle terror from various
angles. First of all, you must stop them or reduce their effect by
military intervention. That we have done, and that is why we declared a
state of emergency in the three states, where those terror attacks were
predominant. In Nigeria, for you to enter a house, whether a living
home, a factory or a religious place, you must get a search warrant
approved by a court but where you declare a state of emergency, the
security people are free to enter even your bedroom if they suspect
there is a criminal there. So, the issue of state of emergency helps
security people to search freely without contravening any law and we are
doing that and it is helping us to apprehend a good number of them.
Source: Sun
